


Alone Together

by witchofhearts



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ace Keith, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Bisexual Lance, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, alternatively: two gays do some walking, amaze, do we know what pidges gender is no its a mystery??
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 22:50:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7482993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchofhearts/pseuds/witchofhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If I had to make a list of people I would NOT want to be stranded with in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, you'd be at the top."</p><p>"And yet, here we are."</p><p>"Here we are."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone Together

**CHAPTER ONE- Keith**

Rule Number One is to never go outside. Ever. Not in a million years and certainly not any sooner. Out of all one hundred and seventeen rules, it’s Number One, with a capitalised N because it is and always will be the most important out of all of them, and everyone in Haven Point knew it. You had to.  
  
I personally had memorised all one hundred and seventeen rules myself, but a lot of people can’t seem to bother doing just that. Of course, I wasn’t willingly going to ram a bunch of ridiculousness that basically amounts to garbage into my head, I’m forced to - Official training and everything - but I know more that most people can't be bothered. Understandable.  
  
They drill it into your head in Primary, so most of the younger generation already have a keen understanding of most of the laws set in place, but people who have lived at least more than half their life down here have trouble remembering.  
  
But everyone, _everyone,_ knows Rule Number One.  
  
It ranked even higher than murder, which was number two on the list, which I find a little ironic at times because, as much as I agree with what the Rules had to say, I think murder would be a little graver.  
  
The thing is, it’s Rule Number One, for a reason, and once you hit 12 years of age, you know it. The first day of Secondary is daunting for all the logical reasons, the workload and the new teachers, the fact that you’d be moving into your new, permanent quarters by yourself. But everyone knows that the real reason why Secondary is scary is because you find out _why_ Rule Number One is Rule Number One and why you should never _ever_ try to escape.  
  
Actually, that’s a bit of a lie. They _say_ that you’ll know everything about what happened, but they only tell you the basics. The world got bombed by a bunch of ‘bad people’ (no kidding, I’m pretty sure they used those words) and now we have to live underground because if we go outside then they’ll find us again. It’s only touching the basics, but they like to keep a little bit of mystery about what happened. It evokes fear in the population, fear about what’s outside and fear about what would happen if you try to break it. Kids are kids, and kids don’t need to know everything. Of course, most people get told when they’re adults, and if they don’t, they work it out. Most of our population were alive when the bombs hit, anyways. They know not to go outside. It’s the children that you have to worry about.  
  
I was quite a smart kid, not to say I’m not still, so I had a few theories running around in my head as I sat down at the front of the classroom on the first day of Secondary, wearing a crisp clean uniform and a nervous look on my face. We waited for ages, and after what felt like an eternity, a blonde woman walked in.I remember being surprised because she was wearing an Official uniform and not flowing skirts and lacy blouses like the teachers at Primary wore. She had a sharp, pointed nose and the way her eyes scanned the class had made me shrink back in my seat. That was exactly when I knew that what we were going to learn was much more serious than I had imagined.  
  
We never learnt anything. Most of them have no idea of the truth, even now.  
  
But I was right. The truth is daunting and I hate to say I’m slightly afraid to this day, but I am. When I was induced into Official training, we were forced to memorise all the history throughout that next month, but it was already embedded into my mind since that first time the three of us who had been selected – _chosen because we were the brightest,_ they said - sat in the middle of an empty classroom two years ago. And that’s when I knew that Rule Number One _had_ to be followed, not only for my own safety, but for the safety of everyone else at Haven Point.  
  
Before all that, I had been so curious as to what was outside. Living underground in artificial lighting isn’t the best kind of life, and I kept on seeing descriptions of weather in my books, sun and storms and mist and snow and I wanted to see a sunset and a sunrise and know what rain felt like on my skin. I remember asking the teacher if we could go outside on a field trip to see, and her face was horrified. _Rule Number One is Rule Number One. Never go outside._  
  
They never had a name for the outside, so I started calling it the Outlands. It wasn’t that I fantasised about the place, in fact once I found out why we couldn’t go out it became the complete opposite, but it felt like a place of such importance, and its lack of name was doing it injustice. It _had_ to have a name. Outlands.  
  
Sounded cool enough, I guessed.  
  
The thing is, and the point I’m trying to get across is that I always follow the rules. Some kids don’t, but that’s mostly the older ones who have lived long enough to remember their life before we got chucked down here. They would sneak out past lockdown and go and try to raid the kitchens. Most of the time they were always caught and I always laugh at that because they must be so _stupid_ to think that they won’t be found out. The rules were put in place for a reason, and the Officials always enforce them. Breaking any of them would be dumb.  
  
Here comes the punchline, of course. Ironic, hypocritical Keith, who thinks that people who break the rules are idiots, but here he stands, outside his dorm, having _stupidly_ locked himself out.  
  
“Shit.” I murmur, pressing hard against the door handle in a feeble effort to get it to budge. It’s 3am and curfew had been in place for a good few hours, there’s no way I could explain this as a simple lockout. My excuse of hearing a noise- which I did, only I must have imagined it- would be played off as suspicious and feeble. _Imagine, Keith Kogane, star pupil being caught out after lockdown._ I could hear the laughs already. That’d be the final nail in my coffin, because I don’t think that our commanding officer would look to fondly on keeping my in training after I was caught with this stunt. It’s not like I _stupidly_ break the rules for fun, though. It’s just sometimes I don’t - agree - with their methods. And sometimes I just say some things. No big deal.

Okay, maybe it kind of is.  
  
“Shit!” I repeat, nearly kicking the door in frustration. This isn’t as big of a deal as breaking Rule Number One, but it’s bad enough as it is. Curfew is number seven on the list, making it into the top ten and definitely scoring me serious points against getting a good job in the future. I’m training to be an Official, for god’s sake! If I get caught out, it’ll be _goodbye_ to all the classes, being trusted with information about the Outlands that the others didn’t know outside of that one first lesson. Stupid.  
  
If I had parents than they would have probably been punished as well, but perhaps fortunately, I’m one of the many orphans down in Haven Point. Of course I am. Someone with a family would have been brought up to be less of an _idiot_.  
  
“Way to go, Keith. Just lock yourself out two fucking weeks before your next juvenile assessment, you’ll definitely _not_ be cleaning toilets for the rest of your life.” I always get sarcastic when I’m annoyed or frustrated or tired, and I’m all three at the moment. I don’t even bother keeping my voice down, knowing that people will be coming at any minute for questioning and then _goodbye_ hopes and dreams.  
  
“Keith?”  
  
I nearly have a heart attack at the sound of a voice, despite the fact that I’m expecting the walls to come alive with Officials at any second. I’m jumpy, nervous, and I have good reason to be. Rule breaking is dealt severely in Haven Point, and I’ll have to pay for this. Slowly, my heart in my throat, I turn around. And staring right at me are the eyes of Lance McClain.  
  
Side note, I _hate_ Lance McClain. There’s not many people I can say that about, considering I like to think of myself as a fairly passive person when it comes to people, but Lance McClain was one of the people I could say with certainty that I disliked. He irritated me to no end, and it wasn’t just his personality either. It was his _everything._  
  
I suppose I should give a background check or something. I first met Lance McClain at the age of seven, actually it was one of the first things I remember about Primary. He was a year younger than me, so I’d never actually been in the same dorm as him or anything, and I was surprised to have him in my class. He had sat next to me in the first lesson as our teacher had told us to ‘get to know one another’.  
  
_“Hi.”_ he had said. _“My name’s Lance._ ”  
  
I’d been a little petrified, because I had no idea what it meant or how to pronounce it. My English had been alright at the time, but I was not very fluent yet. When the people had found me in the shopping mall at the age of four, I didn’t speak a word of the language, my parents only spoke in Korean to me, I’d figured, though there was no way I could remember that now. I didn’t speak any Korean anymore, I’d lost that as I grew up. There were a few things I could remember, broken up sentences and pet names that my mother must have used to call me, but nothing substantial. Nothing stuck.  
  
But Lance had no idea, he had never met me before and he probably thought that I was totally fluent - strange enough, because I’m pretty sure he speaks Spanish too. Blindly unknowing to what most people knew, he looked at me - with eyes that might have registered the tiniest hints of blue, and gave me a crooked smile.  
  
“ _What’s your name?”_ he’d said, and I’d only just understood him. As a kid, I had been very shy and didn’t like talking to many people. I shook my head, I couldn’t understand, obviously. But he acted like this was the smallest thing in the world. “ _It’s okay. I don’t always speak English either.”_

He, however, must have thought that not speaking English was synonymous with being ‘dumb’, however, as he decided to walk me with baby steps through the whole process of the lesson. Which was fine, for linguistics, but once it came to maths, where letters don’t matter, it became clear I was showing him up.

Then he’d given me this big frown and a pouty face and dropped his voice to that cruel tone that only little kids had. _“Do you think you’re better than me?”_

I wildly shook my head.

_“Well, you’re not.”_  
  
I understood that perfectly.  
  
We’d not really talked much after that, in fact it may have even been our longest conversation. But it’d still stuck in my head, even after all those years, and had been the trigger for my intense distaste for Lance McClain. As my English developed, I began to understand his needless sarcastic comments on everything, and grew awfully tired of them. He’s self-absorbed, egotistical, messy, and careless and would _never shut up_.  


Not to mention, the delirious obsession he has with being better than me. It must have come from that one encounter, but he’s really taken it to another level. Ever since I was drafted into Official training, and he wasn’t, he’s got it into his head that we’re ‘rivals’. We’re not.  
  
And here he is, standing behind me in the corridor, breaking curfew and giving me the stupidest doe-eyed gaze. A beat. Another beat. Neither of us dare to speak, or perhaps we’re waiting for the other to open their month. Eventually, he gives in.  
  
“Fancy meeting you here.” his voice has always been teasing, and this is no exception. “Keith Kogane, out of his room after curfew. Who’da thunk?”  
  
“This isn’t the place for sarcasm. What the _hell_ are you doing?”  
  
His eyes glint. “Oh, y’know, just taking a walk.” as he speaks, he runs a hand through his brown hair. I always _hate_ when he does that, and he does it constantly.  
  
“A walk?” I lower my voice. “What the hell are you taking a walk for? It’s _three-friggin-AM._ ”  
  
He shrugs, and somehow his nonchalance makes it even worse. “Could ask you the same thing. I didn’t expect you to be out here, Keith.”  
Somehow, the fact that he knows my name annoys me. We don’t talk, but it just fuels the idea of his stupid rivalry.  
  
“I heard a noise and I decided to take a look. Which means it’s _your_ fault that I’m out here.”  
  
“Well.” Lance grins, and I frown. It is infuriating; his grins may look normal to everyone else, but to me he looks like he’s plotting something. “The more the merrier, I suppose. Considering you’re out here with me, I don’t think you’d mind joining me on my- _oh shit._ ” at the last comment his eyes widen as he stares at something past my shoulder. I hardly dare to turn around, but I know that there is someone behind me, or that he’d heard someone approaching.  
  
Very slowly, and slightly uncharacteristically, Lance lowers his voice. “Okay. I think someone’s coming, so I need you to follow me _right now._ ”  
  
“What? No!” I splutter. “There’s no way that I-“  
  
"Shut up. Sorry but please.” Lance’s voice is urgent. “You were being a drama queen about your life being ruined, but it’s going to be even more so if they find us together. So please, just follow me.” I want to argue with him, but it is true, he has a point. Plus, there is no reason in doing so, he’s already taken off back down the corridor he’d come from. There is a beat and in that moment I realize that yes, in fact, those _were_ footsteps coming behind me and that I should probably run after him.  
  
“I’m _not_ a drama queen! And where the hell are we going?” I hiss, matching my pace with his easily as he scampers and slides down the hallway. But Lance only shakes his head and turns a corner again, seemingly running to the end of the hall.  
  
“But that’s just a storage closest!” I’m so confused and beginning to panic slightly. He was right, us being caught together would be bad, but it would be even worse if we were caught trying to escape from them. If anything, we’d look even more like culprits. I don’t give much more of a flying fuck of what the training centre thinks of me, but I don’t want to be criminal.  
  
“Shut up for a second, Keith.” Lance doesn’t sound mean, just slightly panicked. “You’ll see.”  
But I don’t see. The storage cupboards were always locked, meaning that this would be a literal dead end. We’re about to get caught, I’m sure of it, and I’m about to turn and hiss this to Lance. But, to my surprise, he quite calmly reaches his free hand forwards and pushes the door open. It’s unlocked. With his other hand, he pulls me in, sliding the door shut and locking us in near darkness.  
  
“What the hell was that?” I ask, once we’re in, keeping my voice a whisper. “How the hell did you know that the door was unlocked?” In the dim light, I can see that Lance is grinning like a madman, and I almost feel like slapping it off his face. “Where even are we?”  
  
Lance smiles and reaches around, flipping a light switch. I blink furiously, the light nearly blinding me. “Look around.”  
  
I do.  
  
We are in some sort of storage closest, yes, but it wasn’t one like I could remember. Lining the walls are number upon number of bags, racks of weapons and other items I could never had imagined being in any world other than fiction, let alone in Haven Point.And right above me is a ladder, leading up to a hatch at least eight metres tall.  
  
“Yeah.” Lance says. “I’m gonna go outside.”

**Author's Note:**

> it gets gayer i promise
> 
> if u wanna request something u can message me at my tumblr (dorkstroodle) pls i adore headcanons


End file.
